Page 26 of Monster Mansion

“I’ve lost count, sincerely,” Nox admitted. “But over one hundred and fifty years, at least.”

“One hundred and seventy-two years,” a growling voice said with confidence. Thorn finally spoke and corrected his posture. “It’s been one hundred and seventy-two years. Every year, on the winter solstice, I scratch a nick into the attic ceiling. Helps me keep track.”

My heart broke for the gangly beast. There was something about him that seemed so innocent, so unwilling to be the creature he’d been forced to be. To be the last of his kind while all his family—his herd—had moved on without him must have been the loneliest feeling in the world.

“Well, if that’s not the saddest shit I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ve had a long life,” Ruse cut in, apparently dead-set on soiling every sincere moment between the three of them.

“So, this family that you’re bound to,” I said as I started to put the pieces together, “would I be correct in assuming it’s the Silver family? My employer?”

“Without a doubt,” Ruse insisted. “The Man’s under the impression he can control us by feeding us or allowing us to flex ourmonstrousneeds.”

“But he never will, despite his belief that it’s possible,” Nox said, cutting him off. “Some years ago, we experienced a sort of ‘drought’ when the former master of the mansion stopped feeding us, hoping to drive some distance between his family and the darkness bound to this place. I’m sure there were parts of him who hated our binds to this place almost as much as we did.”

Nox appeared to shudder as he recalled the events. “When the former master packed up the house and left, we sat here for years, hungry and alone. Just the three of us.” His tendrils began to wrap around him as if they were giving him a hug. “I don’t think he could ever find a buyer for such a lavish property in this area, and the three of us began to lose ourselves quite a bit.”

“We were, um… We were desperate.” Thorn interrupted, sheepishly. “Creatures like us don’t die of natural causes, so we just withered away year by year. It was… painful.”

“This clever one told the Man that if he only kept feeding us for a while longer, just another fifty years, that all our otherworldly power would be his to control,” Ruse cut in with raucous laughter as he pointed to Nox. “And the old guy believed it!”

“Give me a chance to explain.” Nox insisted. “The Man did come back, eventually, and I must have caught him in his own moment of desperation.” The shadowy man seemed to look straight through me as he took a breath to prepare himself for what came next. I could feel the goosebumps prickling under the skin on my arm as I waited to hear the inevitable. “I offered him a deal thatIknew was a farce, but he saw it as an excellent opportunity. If he brought us a meal at the very least every other month for fifty years, we would return the favor greatly by giving him the power to control us.”

“What exactly does he want you three to do for him? What’s there to control?” I asked, knowing it didn’t necessarily matter, I just couldn’t wrap my head around why anybody would go through the effort of delivering person after person to be a meal for these creatures if they never actually got anything in return.

“A certain kind of man will always crave money and power. Best-case scenario, he thinks we can be powerful tools for his estate,” Nox mused. “Ruse can shift to look like anyone—even lawyers, bankers, and politicians. Thorn and I can cause chaos, death, and the like. Worst case, we’re sideshow tourist attractions bringing people in from around the globe to see the Dark Wonders of the World, and we spend the rest of eternity being gawked at or called hoaxes.”

“Shit,” I said empathetically.

My mind still had alarms going off reminding me thatIwas supposed to be their next meal. I wasn’t there because they invited me for a sleepover. I was there because Mr. Jonas Silver thought I would be an easy target in his long journey to appease and control the vicious creatures that had been holed up in his ancestral property for almost two centuries.

The three monsters and myself hovered in an awkward silence for a moment as we continued to size each other up. There was one more thing I was curious about, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for what the response would be. Before I could think better of it, it spilled from my mouth like a faucet.

“Why haven’t you fed on me yet?” I sounded almost too comfortable asking such a question, and I hoped my naivety wouldn’t make me a more tempting target. “It’s why I’m here, right? To be a meal for the three of you like feeding time at a zoo?”

Nox sighed, and I swore I could see a smirk flash across his face. “We haven’t eaten you, Logan, because you haven’t been scared.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, not at all understanding what that was supposed to mean.

“A human is only a satisfying meal for us anymore if they’re overcome with fear,” he explained as he boldly paced around the salt circle to the spot right behind the chair I was sitting in. “It’s incidentally become a sort of sport for the three of us. The more scared someone is, the tastier they become. One must pass the centuries some way. I’m afraid the Man’s spell taps into our basest natures at even the best of times. I do not remember relishing it as much before.”

“And despite any of our best efforts, you haven’t beenscaredof us,” Ruse lamented. “Everything we did seemed to ignite something else in you.”

“Sorry,” I said as I tried to hold back a smile. “I’ve never really scared easily.”

I threw Ruse an angry glare that I hoped he recognized. This wasn’t the time for me to question him about Jake—I would find a way to corner him to get some answers here very soon. For now, I wanted to finish understanding the details of the situation.

“We can tell,” Thorn said quietly. He had moved from a standing position to sitting on the ground, but even from where he sat, his height was evident.

My brain churned with possible solutions, still feeling strangely responsible for the monsters.

“And you can’t do anything against Mr. Silver?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Nox hissed. “The magic—our curse—forbids it. Anyone with the Man’s family’s blood cannot die by our hands.”

“We’ve knocked him around a few times, so he’s learned to avoid the place as much as possible,” Ruse added as he paced back and forth under the balcony between the staircases. “Nowadays, he’s in and out too quickly for us to let him truly have it.”

I bounced my knee and chewed the skin around my thumbnail as I tried to think about what to do next. I didn’t want to leave this conversation a stalemate, and I definitely didn’t want to go back to the awkward hovering limbo we’d been living in the past two days. It was a long shot, but I pitched a solution to the imprisoned creatures.

“Tell you what,” I started. “I’ll do some research and see if I can’t come up with a solution to your conundrum. I’ve had a bad feeling about Mr. Silver for a minute, and everything you’ve told me confirms my gut was right.”

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